Near-critical reflection of internal waves

DOI10.1017/S0022112099005108MaRDI QIDQ4951981zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors

Publication date 4 September 2000

Published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/patt-sol/9902003

zbMATH Keywords

sloping bottominstabilitiestransition to turbulenceBrunt-Väisälä frequencyuniformly stratified fluidgroup of nearly monochromatic wavesreflexion of weakly nonlinear internal gravity wavetwo-dimensional irrotational incompressible Boussinesq fluid

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Internal waves for incompressible inviscid fluids (76B55) Stratification effects in viscous fluids (76D50) Stratification effects in inviscid fluids (76B70)

Abstract: Using a matched asymptotic expansion we analyze the two-dimensional, near- critical reflection of a weakly nonlinear, internal gravity wave from a sloping boundary in a uniformly stratified fluid. Taking a distinguished limit in which the amplitude of the incident wave, the dissipation, and the departure from criticality are all small, we obtain a reduced description of the dynamics. This simplification shows how either dissipation or transience heals the singularity which is presented by the classical solution in the precisely critical case. In the inviscid critical case, an explicit solution of the initial value problem shows that the buoyancy perturbation and the along-slope velocity both grow linearly with time, while the scale of the reflected disturbance is reduced as $1/t$. During the course of this scale reduction, the stratification is `overturned' and the Miles-Howard condition for stratified shear flow stability is violated. However, for all slope angles, the `overturning' occurs before the Miles-Howard stability condition is violated and so we argue that the first instability is convective. Solutions of the simplified dynamics resemble certain experimental visualizations of the reflection process.

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Cited in

(30)

• A laboratory study of low-mode internal tide scattering by finite-amplitude topography
• Boundary-confined waves in a librating cube
• Observation of near-critical reflection of internal waves in a stably stratified fluid
• Reflection of internal gravity waves in the form of quasi-axisymmetric beams
• New wave generation
• Resonant Langmuir-circulation–internal-wave interaction. Part 1. Internal wave reflection
• Near-critical reflection of internal waves
• Internal wave attractors: different scenarios of instability
• Visualization of nonlinear effects in reflecting internal wave beams
• Internal wave tunnelling
• Reflection and diffraction of internal waves analyzed with the Hilbert transform
• Experimental study of parametric subharmonic instability for internal plane waves
• Floquet stability analyses of stratified oscillating boundary layers on adiabatic slopes
• Inviscid critical and near-critical reflection of internal waves in the time domain
• Damping of quasi-two-dimensional internal wave attractors by rigid-wall friction
• The interaction of internal wave groups with a uniform sloping boundary
• Experimental study of internal gravity waves generated by supercritical topography
• Reflection of oscillating internal shear layers: nonlinear corrections
• Energy budget in internal wave attractor experiments
• Internal gravity wave beams as invariant solutions of Boussinesq equations in geophysical fluid dynamics
• Instabilities in internal gravity waves
• Strong ill-Posedness in \(L^\infty\) of the 2D Boussinesq equations in vorticity form and application to the 3D axisymmetric Euler equations
• Internal wave focusing by a horizontally oscillating torus
• Direct and large eddy simulations of internal tide generation at a near-critical slope
• Reflection of an internal wave at an interface representing a rapid increase in viscosity
• Vortex cluster arising from an axisymmetric inertial wave attractor
• Critical reflection and abyssal trapping of near-inertial waves on a \(\beta \)-plane
• Nonlinear reflection of a two-dimensional finite-width internal gravity wave on a slope
• Turbulence during the reflection of internal gravity waves at critical and near-critical slopes
• Lagrangian coherent structures and internal wave attractors

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